ent out from Chioggia to ask for terms, and
though, on being told that an unconditional surrender alone would be
accepted, they returned to the city, yet the following day the Genoese
flag was hauled down from the battlements.

On the 24th the doge, accompanied by Pisani and Zeno, made his formal
entry into Chioggia. The booty was enormous; and the companies received
the promised bounty, and were allowed to pillage for three days. So
large was the plunder collected, in this time, by the adventurers, that
the share of one of them amounted to five hundred ducats. The republic,
however, did not come off altogether without spoil--they obtained
nineteen seaworthy galleys, four thousand four hundred and forty
prisoners, and a vast amount of valuable stores, the salt alone being
computed as worth ninety thousand crowns.

Not even when the triumphant fleet returned, after the conquest of
Constantinople, was Venice so wild with delight, as when the doge,
accompanied by Pisani and Zeno, entered the city in triumph after the
capture of Chioggia. From the danger, more imminent than any that had
threatened Venice from her first foundation, they had emerged with a
success which would cripple the strength, and lower the pride of Genoa
for years. Each citizen felt that he had some share in the triumph, for
each had taken his share in the sufferings, the sacrifices, and the
efforts of the struggle. There had been no unmanly giving way to
despair, no pitiful entreaty for aid in their peril. Venice had relied
upon herself, and had come out triumphant.

From every house hung flags and banners, every balcony was hung with
tapestry and drapery. The Grand Canal was closely packed with gondolas,
which, for once, disregarded the sumptuary law that enforced black as
their only hue, and shone in a mass of colour. Gaily dressed ladies sat
beneath canopies of silk and velvet; flags floated from every boat, and
the rowers were dressed in the bright liveries of their employers. The
church bells rang out with a deafening clang, and from roof and
balcony, from wharf and river, rang out a mighty shout of welcome and
triumph from the crowded mass, as the great state gondola, bearing the
doge and the two commanders, made its way, slowly and with difficulty,
along the centre of the canal.

Francis was on board one of the gondolas that followed in the wake of
that of the doge, and as soon as the grand service in Saint Mark's was
over, he slipped off and